The Future Of The 2.4 Stable Kernel

2.4 stable kernel maintainer Marcelo Tosatti recently announced his future plans for the 2.4 kernel. Acknowledging the pending release of the new stable 2.6 kernel, Marcelo explains that we will see only one final round of major fixes in 2.4, after which this kernel will go into maintenance mode. Following the future release of the 2.4.24 kernel, only critical patches and security fixes will be merged.

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17 Comments

I know 2.5 is being worked on, is it more of a test branch than anything, I never seen anything about it being stable Now I am curious to see how 2.6 stands when it’s released.

2003-12-01 7:38 pm

The odd branches are for testing. 2.5 will never be “stable”.

2003-12-01 7:42 pm

Makes sense, would explain the jump 2.2 to 2.4, never was into linux during those times so I never questioned the jump

2003-12-01 7:51 pm

i am going to continue using the 2.4.xx kernel until i buy or download a distro that uses 2.6.xx i have no need for the 2.6.xx kernel yet, i am glad the 2.6.xx series kernel is there for those that need it…

How does that crow taste, Linux fanboys? This should serve as a lesson–nothing is inherently secure, not even OSS.

2003-12-01 11:12 pm

When will a new kernel release be available that fixes the new root exploit? Are they planning on releasing that anytime soon, since this problem has been known about since September? I mean, this is starting to sound like the terrible Microsoft that I hear the Linux guys talking about all the time.

2003-12-01 11:16 pm

Who said that? I guess any sane Linux fanboy knows that OSS isn’t failproof. Sure, some zealots do think the kernel is perfect but let them alone…

2003-12-02 12:07 am

Let’s just put things into perspective here: it was a local exploit, was already discovered and fixed (though not in a release kernel) before the Debian attack. Also, the entire Debian incident was out in the open – nothing was covered up, in fact the intrusion and the subsequent investigation were described in great detail.

The fact that there was an exploit at all is not great, sure, but people make mistakes just the same as they do in the closed source world. The clear difference here is the way it was dealt with.

2003-12-02 12:10 am

When will a new kernel release be available that fixes the new root exploit? Are they planning on releasing that anytime soon, since this problem has been known about since September? I mean, this is starting to sound like the terrible Microsoft that I hear the Linux guys talking about all the time.

there’s already one available.. 2.4.23 fixes that, but it came out AFTER the compromise so they were using 2.4.22 i believe.. if not the 2.2.x series.. i don’t remember which.. so they were affected, but the 2.4.23 kernel is not

2003-12-02 12:10 am

How was this handled differently than a Windows exploit? Every patch I download has a link to a KB article that explains what caused the problem, what is affected, and multiple solutions to resolve the problem.

2003-12-02 1:41 am

due to the recent kernel exploite i will be updating my kernel sooner than expected…

hi 2.6.xx

2003-12-02 1:42 am

How was this handled differently than a Windows exploit? Every patch I download has a link to a KB article that explains what caused the problem, what is affected, and multiple solutions to resolve the problem.

The problem is Microsoft doesn’t post any of that information until they fix the problem, which often takes months. They usually don’t admit any exploit existing until either they have a fix ready, or until the news gets widespread enough that they can’t pretend that there isn’t a problem.

If a Microsoft server got compromised, you can be sure they wouldn’t give full details. They’d make it out to be as small a deal as possible, whereas here all information is readily disclosed and made public.

2003-12-02 9:03 am

Cheapskate wrote: due to the recent kernel exploite i will be updating my kernel sooner than expected…

hi 2.6.xx

Please don’t.

Not for security reasons.

The fix is in 2.4.23, and the kernel folks still haven’t finished forward porting all security fixes from 2.4 to 2.6 (don’t have the ref, but there was some talk about it on the kernel ML). This means 2.6 is at this time not as secure as 2.4.

If you need the features or want the cutting edge, go ahead; just be sure to stay behind a firewall (or that the machine is non-critical).

2003-12-02 3:46 pm

df wrote:

How does that crow taste, Linux fanboys? This should serve as a lesson–nothing is inherently secure, not even OSS.

—

Yummy! And i fear you are confusing two things: There is a difference between saying “something is inherently secure” and saying “something is inherently more secure”. The latter includes a comparison and i think i remember that GNU/Linux advocates usually phrase it like this: “Unix is inherently more secure than MS Windows.”

They don’t say “Unix is inherently secure” because this is bull, as you already pointed our correctly.